Jumping in Puddles

by Claire Allan

  She was probably terrified he was going to go nuts and start tearing the place up or something. But that wasn’t like him. He was very tempted to say in a childish manner that his name was not James and he wasn’t prone to violent outbursts but he doubted that would encourage Clodagh to lift the phone and buzz to let Laura know he was there.

  “Is Laura in?”

  “Yes,” she said. She was clearly not in the mood for small talk or idle conversation and he was, he had to admit, not in the mood to try.

  He sat down and lifted the same old copy of the Ulster Tatler as he had the last time he was in and started to read.

  Clodagh lifted the phone and tapped in a short number. “He’s here,” she said, almost in a whisper – but not quite.

  Nil points for subtlety.

  So, he had been expected – well, he thought this should be interesting at least. Setting the magazine back down, before having the chance to discover who had married who, divorced who or started some poncy art show somewhere, he waited for the door to open.

  He wasn’t sure what to expect. Would Laura look exhausted, or beaten down, or defiant? He didn’t know which he dreaded more – or which would be easier to deal with.

  As it happened she looked okay. Her hair was tied up in a loose pony-tail and there were no obvious signs of sleepless nights and buckets of tears. Then again, Laura wasn’t a buckets-of-tears kind of a girl. She was a foot-stomping, pouting, get-her-own-way type of a person. He used to like that. When she told him he was the one she wanted, and she was going to get him – he liked that a lot.

  She nodded towards him. “Come through.”

  He stood up, nodded and followed her. She held the door open for him, as she would for a client and gestured towards a chair before sitting down opposite him. All they needed, he thought, was an uber-strong flashlight pointed directly in his eyes and it would feel like an interrogation.

  Laura sat forward, resting her arms on the desk. She was wearing a crisp white short-sleeved shirt with a pencil skirt. It was November and it was freezing. Liam couldn’t help but feel she was showing off her unbruised arms to make a point.

  “Well, I guess we know why you are here,” she said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay,” Laura said sharply, sitting back in her chair. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He assumed she was looking for an answer less obvious than “Your partner is a wife-beating scumbag” but those were the only words racing through his head.

  “Well . . . you know,” he offered after a short pause.

  “Well, if you’re worried, James hasn’t hit me. I’m fine.”

  “You are fine? With what he has done?”

  “He hasn’t done anything to me. But no, Liam. I’m not okay with what he has done. Not one bit.”

  “So it’s over then?” He felt he might as well come out and ask it.

  “Oh, don’t be so overly dramatic, Liam. It’s not all black and white. You’re only hearing one side of the story. He’s not a bad man – they just had a bad marriage. Bad marriages do happen, you know,” she said, this time meeting his gaze.

  The meaning wasn’t lost on him and he just couldn’t believe it. Here she was, bold as brass, comparing what they had with what Ruth and James had.

  “What he did was wrong and we will deal with that. Maybe I’ll leave him. I don’t know. I’m not sure what will happen at this stage. But,” Laura said caustically, “whatever I decide it is none of your business. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh but you have to accept that regardless of what happens with me and James, we – you and me – are over.”

  Shaking his head, he made to stand up. “That man won’t be near my daughter. And if you are sensible, Laura – which I’m seriously starting to doubt now – you’ll be careful. You didn’t see Ruth last night – her cuts and bruises. You didn’t see her children – his children – crying their eyes out. If that is the kind of man you want to be with then I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  Laura stood up and pushed her chair in. “If you don’t mind, I do have work to do.”

  “Yes, I hear there are a few wife-beaters needing a defence round these parts this morning.”

  It was a cheap shot – not one he was proud of, but he couldn’t help himself. He just could not believe that she was standing by James. When Tammy Wynette sang her song encouraging all women to stand by their men surely that didn’t extend to violent, manipulative bullies? How could Laura, perhaps one of the most determined and bolshy women he had ever met in his life, be taken in by this man?

  He was shaking his head as he left the office, not even bothering to say his goodbyes to Clodagh.

  There was no way though, and he promised that to himself now, that his daughter was going anywhere near James and his heavy fistedness.

  He dug his hands into his pocket and headed straight for the Country Kitchen where he was going to treat himself to a cooked breakfast and mug of over-stewed tea while he tried to calm himself down.

  Pushing the door open, the chatter of his neighbours faded slightly when they saw him. It didn’t take a genius to work out what they had been talking about.

  He felt as if he was walking into the scene of an old Western film. The Country Kitchen was the saloon bar and the townsfolk were eyeing him up suspiciously. He would not have been in the least bit surprised if someone piped up with a quick “You’re not from round these parts now, are you, boy?”

  As it happened they just stared at him for the briefest of moments before returning to their chatter. But he was sure as he walked up to order his full Irish he heard someone whisper “Aye him, that’s yer man. His wife ran off with that fecker.”

  He felt his face blaze. The shame of it, he thought, being left for a wife-beater but worse than that was the fact that even though Laura knew the full sorry story she seemed to prefer James anyway. She had to question whether or not she would leave him. How was that right?

  “Liam!” he heard a voice call out and he looked round to see Detta by the fire, smiling warmly. She called him over, a little more loudly than she needed to and gestured to him to come and sit beside her. “Here! I’ve a seat by the fire. C’mon over!”

  As he walked towards her she stood up and when he got to the table she reached across and kissed him square on the lips, rubbing her hand gently along his cheek before pulling him into a tight embrace.

  “Let’s give them something else to gossip about,” she whispered as he stared dazed into her curls.

  It wasn’t gossiping he was in the mood for now.

  Sitting down he stared at her – trying to read from her face if it was just a kiss to distract the jungle drums of Rathinch, or if it meant something more.

  It wasn’t something you could really ask, was it? Especially not in a cafe were the customers had ears like bats and all appeared to have their mobile phones at the ready, set to text the latest news as it broke. Who needed reality TV when you have live action in the Country Kitchen?

  And it wasn’t something you could easily move on from and fall into a safe and easy conversation. But he should have known none of this would phase Detta. Nothing ever phased her. He admired her for that.

  “Right, the full Irish, is it?” she asked. “Can’t beat a full Irish on a cold morning.”

  He nodded, stupidly. Like a nodding dog. He had to put his hand to his jaw line in a cool “thinking man” pose to stop looking like a complete eejit.

  “I’ve ordered scrambled eggs and toast. I’m watching my figure,” she said, sitting back and patting her almost flat stomach.

  “You’re lovely the way you are,” he answered, realising that sounded weak and geeky. But what was he supposed to say? Let me do the watching, baby, I like the view? He cringed at the thought. It had been a long time since he had to chat any one up – seven years since he had wooed Laura and she had done most of the running.

  It was strange, when he was at work sorting out deals and making orders h
e could charm the birds from the trees but put him in a room with a woman he found attractive – never mind a woman he found very attractive – and he lost the ability to form any sort of coherent sentence. He would just mumble like some stereotype of an Irish thicko.

  “Ach thanks, but sure I’ve got to keep watching anyway. Especially with the way I like my chocolate biscuits. I swear if there was a twelve-step programme I would join up.”

  He smiled. He was partial to chocolate biscuits himself. Laura used to ration him to one each evening with his cup of tea. He stuck to that habit even after she left but feck it, tonight he was going to eat half a packet if he damned wanted and if he was lucky Detta would eat the other half. He smiled at the thought.

  “How are you anyway?” Detta asked, leaning close to Liam and taking his hand.

  To give the gossips something else to talk about apart from the James/Ruth scandal? He didn’t know – but he let her hold his hand and he liked it. Her hand was soft and warm and when she squeezed his he felt a shiver of excitement run through him.

  “I’m okay. I’ve just seen her – Laura. She’s considering staying with him. She’s okay with him.”

  Most people would have looked shocked, or gone into a disgusted rant. Detta just shrugged her shoulders.

  “What do you want her to do, Liam? Did you want her to leave him and come back to you?”

  “No. But I don’t want her to get hurt. I might not be in love with her any more but I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  Detta raised an eyebrow. “You’re not in love with her any more?”

  Liam sat back, still holding her hand and thought for the briefest of moments.

  “No, Detta,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I’m not in love with her any more.”

  “That’s good to know,” Detta said with a smile as the young waitress placed their meals in front of them and they let go of each other’s hands – as the beeps from incoming text messages from the other diners reached fever pitch.

  * * *

  He had gone back to work like a man possessed. One minute he was dragging his heels worrying about Laura and Poppy and the next he had a distinct spring in his step at the memory of Detta’s kiss.

  And when he was in neither of those moods he was wondering how on earth he had managed to get roped into driving himself, Ruth and Detta up to Derry the following night to make sure Niamh didn’t end up locked in a police cell or lying drunken in a gutter somewhere, which – according to Detta – was a distinct possibility.

  Of course he would have to ask his mother to baby-sit again, and she would assume he was out wooing Detta and he couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t – or that he was for that matter.

  He switched his computer off and put his coat on. Calling down to the lads in the yard that he was taking a half day he went home, buried his head under his pillow and decided he wasn’t going to shift it until he had to pick Poppy up from after-school club.

  43

  Lorraine had a smile on her face when she came back from Ruth’s house. Ciara had been feeding Ella and watching Hollyoaks when her mother walked into the house.

  Ciara found it a little strange – after all, she had just been with a woman going through the wringer and yet she seemed almost chipper.

  “Hello, pet,” her mother said poking her head into the kitchen, “and hello, wee princess. How are you?” she added, cooing at her granddaughter.

  “I’m fine and she’s fine,” Ciara replied, handing her daughter a sippy cup which would start their nightly game of throw the cup, pick up the cup, and throw the cup again. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine too,” Lorraine said, switching on the kettle.

  “And Ruth?”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you think we can maybe move past fine?” Ciara asked with a smile.

  “Sorry, pet, lost in my thoughts. We had a nice chat. She’s a nice woman – we’ve lots in common though you wouldn’t believe it. We’re going to try meeting up a bit more. But don’t you worry. The support group is still your own! We’re going to do something even more exciting instead,” she said with a smile.

  In that moment, Ciara felt her heart swell with love for her mother. She knew then that they were both over the rocky times of the last year or two and that things could only get better from then on in.

  “I love you, Mum,” she said. “You do my head in at times – I’m not denying it – but I think you’ve done pretty damn well over the years. I’ve turned out pretty okay – aside from the whole teenage-pregnancy thing.” She glanced at her daughter, feeling a little guilty for talking about her like she was some sort of mistake. Of course, Ella was a mistake or, as she preferred to think of it these days, some sort of “happy accident” – although in her mind the words happy and accident didn’t really belong together. If she could have gone back in time she would have – through some magical force – arranged to have her daughter when she was older and wiser and not quite so marked out as a social leper for being a teen mum. Or she would move them all to a big city where no one would have noticed let alone cared.

  “What’s done is done,” Lorraine said. “And we wouldn’t be without her for the world.”

  “Except at three in the morning,” Ciara said with a smile.

  “Well, that goes without saying. But even then there are worse things you can be dealing with at three in the morning than Gummy the Wonder Baby over there.”

  Lorraine poured her drink and sat down at the table. “Oh yes, and I meant to tell you. Ruth and I are going to go shopping – just as soon as she feels up to it. We’re going to buy some gorgeous new clothes and a pair of high heels the like of which have never been seen in this neck of the woods. We’re going to help each other get back out and stop living like sad old baggages.”

  “You don’t live like a sad old baggage – neither of you!”

  “Aye, but if we keep on the way we’re going it’s only a matter of time. Have you not noticed the serious lack of glamorous grannies round these parts? Before you know it we’ll be wearing cardigans and slippers out to do the weekly shop and we’ll have developed moustaches and everything.”

  Ciara laughed out loud. “Mum, I don’t think that’s quite you or Ruth somehow.”

  “Well, we’re going to make sure of that, and that’s for sure.” Lorraine said, sipping from her cup of tea. “Why don’t you put madam down to bed? I’ll nip out and get us a DVD and we can watch it together. Something girlie with Brad Pitt in it?”

  “I’m more of a Johnny Depp woman myself,” Ciara replied, “but either suits me. Get some sweeties too?”

  “And crisps!” Lorraine said with a grin. “I’m supposed to be watching my figure but might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, eh? Life is too short to say no to Pringles.”

  * * *

  Ella’s eyelids were drooping heavily. She had just finished her bedtime bottle and Ciara was rocking her gently on her lap watching her face for signs that she had finally given in to sleep. She may only have been a baby but she could mess with her mother’s head like you wouldn’t believe. She would close her eyes and Ciara would dare to breathe out, convinced her daughter was finally in the Land of Nod, only to open them wide again and let out a gurgle of laughter. This would happen at least three more times before they would droop in one last effort – the poor child nearly going cross-eyed with the effort of trying to stay awake for just one more minute.

  Lorraine had left for the DVD shop shortly before and Ciara was planning to light the fire for her return. They used to enjoy curling up in front of the fire when she was smaller, watching Annie over and over again until she knew the words to all the songs, and the dialogue and most of the dance routines.

  Kissing Ella goodnight one last time she crept down the stairs and set about making the room as cosy as it could be. She even lifted the cream fleece blanket from her bedroom and brought it down so they could curl up properly.

  Lorraine arrived home with a handful
of goodies and a smile on her face. “I got Pirates of the Caribbean and Thelma and Louise, so everyone’s a winner!”

  “I’ve only one thing to ask,” Ciara replied. “Which one of you and Ruth is Thelma and which one is Louise?”

  “Which one gets to bonk Brad Pitt? I’ll be that one,” Lorraine laughed.

  * * *

  Ciara woke to Ella’s chatter at just gone seven. She was quite impressed – seven was quite a lie-in these days. She was grateful for it too. Today was going to be a long day. First of all she had to go to work and deal with the weekly delivery of household goods. So for the majority of the day she would be up to her eyes in pricing toilet rolls, kitchen rolls and a variety of soaps and washing-up liquids. Mrs Quinn was still resisting a modern till system – shunning a fancy new scanner and bar-code system for the old-fashioned pricing gun, stickers and push-button till. Ciara had long since given up on trying to explain to her that she would save time and money by moving with the times after Mrs Quinn accused her of being work shy. She now just got on with her work, wielding the pricing gun as if it were an AK 47. How she dreamed of sticking one of the lurid orange stickers square on Mrs Quinn’s forehead! That thought got her through many a long morning.

  But that aside, she had promised Ruth she would call past her house when she was finished work and check on Eimear, Thomas and Matthew. Ruth had, despite her better judgement it would appear, been talked into going to Derry to act as one of the minders for Niamh who was going to confront her husband’s mistress. They had explained to Ciara that they might draw unwelcome attention to themselves if they invited an underage drinker along. She was fine with that. She wasn’t quite up for a night in a stuffy fancy bar which only sold fine wine and designer beers. She was happy to be friends with the Loonies, but it so wasn’t her scene.